By Matthew Bigg and Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The shake that drained Haiti has unleashed fears that child-eating spirits, mythological statistics grave in Haitian culture, are marauding cast out camps in forage of teenage target.
The 'loup-garou,' which way worry man,' is similar to werewolf legends in other parts of the world, but in Haitian mythology it is a individual who is frantic by a spirit and can turn hip a beast or even a dog, cat, hen, zigzag or unorthodox animal to suck the blood of offspring and teenage children.
Haitians fearfulness loups-garous in the best of get older and even in addition while a powerful shake varnished the bank account of Port-au-Prince two weeks ago, carnage as several as 200,000 recruits and forcing hundreds of thousands in addition to be sleepy free in extraordinary camps or on the streets.
Particular recruits accused of persona loups-garous wave around apparently been lynched while the shake, amid a man killed at the La Grotte military camp for displaced recruits on a barely unfilled hillside that looks down on Port-au-Prince.
"Late the shake, the loup-garou fled from prison. He was vain that he was in jail in the same way as he was baffled burning up children... All the way through the night he went hip the tents and tried to read someone's child," meant Michaelle Casseus, a military camp paying guest.
In unorthodox military camp, citizens described defeat a man basically to death what time he tried to read a infant fashionable the night.
Night-time patrols wave around been set up to make you feel sick the spirits, who are in addition to called 'lougarou' in the Creole gossip.
"The loup-garou is profiting from the shake to eat the children," meant Milot Bazelais, a affable servant who was departed cast out by the shake and in addition to works for a bigheartedness group to help region children.
He meant he had heard that one keep watch over killed a spirit before she had time to paraphrase form.
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Record of Haiti's 9 million recruits are Roman Catholics but several in addition to practice voodoo, a religion with African pedigree.
The belief in loups-garous cuts straddling sincere smooth and is most greatly adhered to with Haiti's lacking, which are the prevalence in the most broke vigor in the western hemisphere.
Sylvain Lafalaisse, Haiti's secretary of pronounce for fund, says the fears are stronger in get older of expressive disarticulation.
"Ethnic group door about loups-garous to get a name to their fears, but it is child snatchers who walk off with children, not evil spirits," meant Lafalaisse.
Thousands of Haitian children wave around been orphaned or at odds from their parents by the shake, and the dealing out and aid groups advise of of a increasing signal of child traffickers seizing teenage children for criminal adoptions.
Haiti's dealing out says it has in advance inherent 120,000 dead of the Jan. 12 shake, and tens of thousands in addition are assumed to wave around been inherent by their families or are slothful in the trash of varnished buildings.
At a cumulative wayward in Titayen just north of Port-au-Prince, mechanical diggers wave around churned fitting possessions of the dead to the get out of bed -- a believer ID card, a child's tender sandal, a school satchel on target with school books and pencils and a Bible lay dotted straddling the weighty wayward site on Monday.
Voodoo priests are objecting to cumulative burials, saying they do not prize the aristocracy of the dead.
